Preaching Christ + October 27, 2024 + Reformation Sunday

John 8:31-36

Warning: proceed with caution.

I don’t know a Lutheran who doesn’t love Reformation Day/Sunday (actually, I do know a couple, but I love it). Across the parishes of our tradition there are many ways that American Lutherans have observed this day. In many parts of the United States, Lutherans aren’t the majority and usually recoil from any kind of spotlight. And yet, when the last Sunday in October arrives, many Lutherans lean into the joy of the day with festive celebrations, invocations of the Spirit, and robust singing of Ein Feste Burg.

But along with all of that, we sometimes hear these same old tropes and a few new ones:

1. We rejected being Roman Catholic. [C.A. Articles in Which Are Reviewed the Abuses Which Have Been Corrected]

2. The actual Body and Blood of Jesus is not present in the eucharistic mystery. [C.A. X]

3. The Mass is rejected. [C.A. XXIV]

4. Lutherans should not be celebrating a denomination-specific feast. Enter: “The Chair of Peter,” (Feb. 22) and “The Triumph of Orthodoxy” (First Sunday of Orthodox Lent). All traditions celebrate themselves and the way that God has moved among them.

Along with these “reinterpretations” of history, somewhere along the way things like incense, vestments, chant, statuary, a calendar of saints’ days, the Blessed Virgin Mary, and plenty of other persons and things have been thrown into iconoclastic Protestant bonfires. But none of this is what the observance of the Reformation is about, and it is imperative that preachers make this point.

The spark of Reformation – mythologized in the posting of Luther’s Ninety-Five Theses - is about one doctrine and one doctrine only: justification by grace through faith (Ephesians 2:8-9). That is it. The Reformation is about nothing else. Giving indulgence (pun intended…) to our anti-Roman biases, eschewing Confessional Lutheran teaching in favor of the radical reformation, or contemporary drifts toward Unitarianism-in-Albs…all of these infect corners of the ELCA. None of them are accurate ways to observe the Reformation or the doctrine on which it is built: justification.

This Reformation Sunday, the proclaimer of the Gospel has one task: preach freedom.

Many will use John 8:31-36 as the Gospel pericope of this day, and for good reason. Jesus has a conversation with Jews “…who had believed in him,” and Jesus does for them what he always does: he offers freedom. “If you continue in my word, you are truly my disciples; and you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free,” he says.

Their reply to Jesus is historically wrong. “We are descendants of Abraham and have never been slaves to anyone.” This, of course, is not true: the Hebrew people had at various times been not only slaves to Egypt, but also to Babylon. Their reply to Jesus is simply inaccurate.

Lutherans must be careful about an implied antisemitism in how we speak about the law. “The law” has been historically caricatured by Protestants as restrictive, ridiculous, even regressive. Such straw men are as simplistic as they are inaccurate in how Jews (including Jesus) understand the purpose of the law. Superimposed on to the Reformation, such a (wrong) view makes it easy to vilify Roman Catholics as being slavishly devoted to a legalism that Luther cured. Lutheran congregations should refrain all of this, and also from a smugness that almost delights in schism: “it’s a good thing we reformed that.” Often, the conversation ends there.

The truth of the matter is that we need Reformation as much now as we have ever needed it. These six verses in John 8 are ridiculously simple because they begin and end with the promise of freedom. Nonetheless, many of our own churches continue to restrict freedom. How many of our parishes harbor a latent misogyny that runs through parish life? How many of our parishes remain quietly suspicious of immigrants, or those of other races, or LGBTQIA+ children of God? How many of our churches simply ignore the poor, the homeless, or the addicted? On the other end of the spectrum, how many of self-identified “progressives” will entertain the possibility of faithfulness for those who disagree with them politically, or whose state is identified on an electoral map by a different color? How often does a call to social justice turn into a new “law” that demands unquestioning agreement? Each end of the spectrum carries with it the potential for a rigid legalism, restricting the gift of God’s freedom and running counter to the verses that John presents today.

“Judgement” is itself the slavery to sin about which Jesus speaks, and “judgement” is the very thing that drove medieval people to hyper-compliance with church law. We still act like judges, determining whom God will love. We might not say it out loud, but we may as well. “In order to be approved for God’s love and grace, you must first act as we act, think as we think, speak as we speak, vote as we vote, dress as we dress, and love as we love. Once you conform to our norms, God will love you, and we may too (not likely).”

Reform that. Bust it up. Reform it.

This Reformation Sunday, the proclaimer of the Gospel has one task: preach freedom. This is the message of the Reformation: that souls are unburdened, and that freedom rules the day. Evangelical preachers must unabashedly preach grace as free today and every day. Avoid Reformation Sunday as a history lesson and stick to the simple six verses John presents us with today. Once you’ve done that, wear red if you want…or not, you are free to do so, or not do so. You might eat a bratwurst, or a tortilla, or a pupusa, or some other food from some other part of the world where this message of “freedom” has taken root.

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PASTOR JONATHON MOYERS is originally from the farm country of western Illinois, serves as pastor to the Chesapeake Country Area Ministry (nicknamed "Shore Lutherans"), a covenant partnership between Grace Lutheran Church of Easton, MD and Saint Paul's Lutheran Church of Cordova, MD. Before his time on the Eastern Shore of Maryland, he served as trauma chaplain for Charleston General Hospital in West Virginia, pastor at St. Paul's Lutheran Church of Ironton, OH, and St. John's Lutheran Church of Dayton, OH. He holds an MDiv from Lexington Theological Seminary, an STM with emphasis in Lutheran Confessions and Systematics from Trinity Lutheran Seminary at Capital University, and is currently studying in the DMin program (liturgics) at United Lutheran Seminary in Philadelphia.